The Mars project: PDF in XML

ABSTRACT

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a page-oriented, graphically rich document format based on PostScript semantics. It is the file format underlying the Adobe® Acrobat® viewers and is used throughout the publishing industry for final form documents and document interchange. Beyond document layout, PDF provides enhanced capabilities, which include logical structure, forms, 3D, movies and a number of other rich features.

Developers and system integrators face challenges manipulating PDF and its data. They are looking for solutions that allow them to more easily create and operate on documents, as well as to integrate with modern XML-based document processing workflows.

The Mars document format is based on the fundamental structures of PDF, but uses an XML syntax to represent the document. Mars uses XML to represent the underlying data structures of PDF, as well as incorporating additional industry standards such as SVG, PNG, JPG, JPG2000 and OpenType. Mars combines all of these components into a ZIP-based document container.

The use of open standards in Mars means that Mars documents can be used with a large range of off-the-shelf tools and that a larger population of developers will be very familiar with its underlying technology. Using these standards, publishers gain access to all of the richness of PDF, but can now tightly integrate Mars into their document workflows.

REFERENCES

• 1: Adobe Systems Incorporated, PDF Reference, 5th ed., Berkley: Peachpit Press, 2005. 0-321-30474-8.
• 2: CORPORATE Adobe Systems Inc., PostScript language reference manual (2nd ed.), Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1990
• 3: International Organization for Standardization, Document management -- Electronic document file format for longterm preservation -- Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1), 2005. ISO 19005-1:2005.
• 4: International Organization for Standardization, Graphic technology -- Prepress digital data exchange -- Use of PDF-- Part 1: Complete exchange using CMYK data (PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-1a), 2001. ISO 15930-1:2001.
• 5: World Wide Web Consortium, Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0, 4th ed., 2006. {Online} http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816/
• 6: World Wide Web Consortium, Mobile SVG Profiles: SVG Tiny and SVG Basic, 2003. {Online} http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGMobile/
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• 9: World Wide Web Consortium, Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification, 2004. {Online} http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core
• 10: PKWare Incorporated, Zip Format Specification Application Note, 1989. {Online} http://www.pkware.com/index.php?option=com_content&tas k=view&id=64&Itemid=107
• 11: Adobe Systems Incorporated, Mars Project, 2006. {Online} http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/mars
• 12: PDFTron Systems Incorporated, PDF2SVG, 2007. {Online} http://www.pdftron.com/pdf2svg/

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.7 DOCUMENT AND TEXT PROCESSING
      I.7.2 Document Preparation
          Subjects: Markup languages

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.7 DOCUMENT AND TEXT PROCESSING
      I.7.4 Electronic Publishing

General Terms:
Documentation

Keywords:
Mars, PDF, SVG, XML, package, zip